Thanks for this detailed report, Vivek! Julio and Edgar have my admiration as
well. Wish I'd been there, to add to the applause!Victor
On Sunday, December 31, 2023 at 01:31:33 AM EST, V M <[email protected]>
wrote:
https://www.heraldgoa.in/Cafe/Standing-with-Giants/215855
Such pleasure and privilege for me earlier this week, to help launch Hope for
Sanity: Selected Writings of Julio Ribeiro 2002-2021 in conversation with the
94-year-old author (and distinguished police officer and civil servant) in his
ancestral village of Porvorim, along with an intimate audience including three
generations of his family as well as his 92-year-old younger brother Edgar
Ribeiro, the former chief planner of the Government of India. The two men are
personal heroes of mine, and so many others, with their unstinting and unbroken
record of service and commitment to the country and their fellow citizens.
Separately and together, they have represented the finest tradition of Goan
contributions to the making of modern India, and the fact they continue to do
so with undimmed passion is nothing short of awe-inspiring.
On the evening of the book launch, I asked the brothers how it is that
lightning struck twice in their family, and delivered two towering figures into
one household. They demurred modestly, and made jokes, and Edgar went so far as
to say they were no different from “all the Goan families of the time”, besides
their father too had been extremely diligent in his own career in the India
Postal Service. Yet, we can all see those are not any kind of sufficient
explanation for the sheer bravery and fighting spirit these otherwise entirely
gentle men possess in full measure, nor the indomitable mettle that has led
them to repeatedly stand up and speak where others remain scared and silent. I
liked how Samar Halarnkar put it in his brief Foreword to the new book:
“Nations frequently require citizens who remind them of what is right and
wrong. History tells us this not a popular task, but this is what Julio Ribeiro
has done since he retired as one of India’s finest: he has become one of our
conscience keepers.”
This refusal to tell anything less than the truth, in as forthright a manner as
possible, was fully apparent during the launch of Hope for Sanity: Selected
Writings of Julio Ribeiro 2002-2021. Like everyone else in our fraught times, I
am fully aware of many truths that are meant to be left unsaid, of lines that
you are not meant to cross in public when referring to the government, amidst
the very close and constant attention of people constantly monitoring for any
signs of dissent, disagreement, or what Orwell called “thought crimes.” In this
increasingly claustrophobic environment, it takes rare guts to go ahead and
speak your mind anyway, and it is especially because that characteristic is
conspicuously lacking in 2023 Goa that it was so stirring to hear and see the
fearless nonagenarian state it exactly like he believes it in Porvorim earlier
this week.
Halarnkar summarizes this trait nicely: “Ribeiro has – through his popular
newspaper columns and public letters – chided former colleagues on
extrajudicial and illegal approached to their job, criticized the demonization
of minorities, described and offered solutions to the fraught job of policing
the new India and never hesitated to hold a mirror to his people and his
country. It would have been easy for Ribeiro to do none of this and spend his
retirement basking in adulation, which is what most men and women in uniform
favourably regarded by the public when in service tend to do. But doing the
safe and popular thing has never been his approach to life…as his career
indicated, he has always been guided not just by the law but his conscience,
even at the cost of personal safety, as the assassination attempt on him and
his wife in 1991 when he was ambassador to Romania made clear.”
Hope for Sanity is an interesting selection of writing that also reminds us
that Ribeiro is almost unique in speaking truth to power in the way he does.
The titles alone tell the tale quite bluntly: Mumbai Police Needs Leadership,
Criminals in Uniform, How Political Masters are Orchestrating the Delhi Police
in Riots Case, The Dangerous ‘Yes Men’: Growing Political Interference in
Appointments Doesn’t Bode Well, Choosing Wrong Men to Lead, As a Responsible
Political Figure, Devendra Fadnavis Ought to Moderate his Impulses, Rakesh
Asthana’s New Job Shows How the Administration is Out to Destroy Our
Institutions. There are excellent pieces on many topics, including a moving
introspection about Indian policing after the death of George Floyd galvanized
the Black Lives Matter movement in the USA and beyond: “Racism in the US and
Islamaphobia and casteism in India are on the same shameful planc. Our leaders
should contemplate on the larger picture. It shows us as narrow-minded bigots,
unworthy of sitting at the high table in the comity of nations unless we decide
that hating minority communities diminishes the human race. Islamophobia and
caste prejudice should nudge us to go down on bended knees to beg forgiveness
of those we have wronged.
In conversation at the book launch in Porvorim, in response to multiple
questions from the audience including the youngest generation of their family,
it became clear the two giants amongst us were still single-mindedly focused on
what used to be referred to as “the weaker sections of society.” Those
sentiments – summarized at one time as ‘Garibi Hatao – have become passé to our
collective detriment, in an era of unbridled kleptocratic oligarchy. But it
didn’t have to be this way, and it still doesn’t, if only more people would pay
attention and follow the lead of Edgar and Julio Ribeiro. Here’s just one of
many telling anecdotes from the latter’s riveting interview with Meenal Baghel,
which is one of the highlights of his new book, about the events in Bombay
after Indira Gandhi was murdered by her own bodyguards:
`“I phoned my control room and said, ‘Take down my instructions and read them
back to me’. The instructions were: If there is any attempt by anyone to
assault or harm the life and property of any Sikh in the city, the people were
free to open fire. As I was returning to Bombay, I got a call from Balasaheb
[Thackeray] complaining about the order…I said ‘You have not read the order
closely. The key word in English is IF: If someone indulges in violence and
arson against Sikhs. If they don’t, my people cannot just open fire’. He was
livid…a bit of a bully but if you stood up to him he would climb down.”
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